Academy Days
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: It's one thing to look back and regret...another to look back and remember those times that helped make you who you are.


A/N: Ok, so this is what happens when I get really bored late at night. Hopefully, it makes sense to everyone, and now I'm done rambling. Oh, and CI's not mine.

* * *

It isn't until he realizes he's not going to be walking out the door to go back into the city later on that morning that he starts thinking. It's exactly five-thirty, or so says the clock on the stove. The sun hasn't come up yet, and he's standing in the kitchen, a mug of coffee in his hands, waiting for the rest of the world to wake up. But it'll be at least another hour before it does.

So he leans against the counter, and stares out the window, not really looking at anything in particular and not really wanting to. But after a few minutes go by, it's not the neighborhood that he's become so used to that he sees. It's Manhattan, and a group of people many would've referred to as kids. He realizes at this point that he can pick a few faces out of the crowd, one of them being his own, the others being that of the woman he'd end up marrying, and of former partners and closest friends.

The scene plays out again before his eyes for a few seconds longer, and then it changes. He can see that the first group has been split into a lot of smaller ones. Now the only faces he sees are his own, and Angie's, and after a few more seconds, Alicia's, Aidan's and Erin's. The old vice-narcotics lineup, or so they'll come to be known in a few years' time. Right now, they're all stuck in the academy, wanting to be out on the streets, but it'll be a while before they'll really become members of the NYPD. At the moment he's watching, their so-called lives are only beginning.

He watches their instructors drilling into them the things that they will need to know; watches as that group from before looks back at said instructors, some of them paying attention and some of them not. He knows which faces will end up leaving, which ones will stay and end up the focus of one of IAD's investigations, which ones will stay and rise through the ranks. He knows which ones will have the reputations that precede them, and which ones will never be as well-known as the others.

But at the moment, from what he can see now, they're all still friends. There's nothing that makes them any different from the others, never mind the fact that the instructors might target a few of them more often than they do anyone else. They've all got the same goals in mind at this point: to take up a shield, walk a beat, and wait to see where the city and the department will lead them. He knows that some are only taking this as an easy road out, that some have had the intentions to do this since they really _were_ kids, that some of them are doing this to put themselves through college, or night school. It hardly matters, though.

The scene changes again, and suddenly, he finds himself standing on one side of the room, with those he'll end up running another case with in a few days' time, even though technically, he's not a cop anymore. He sees the group on the other side of the room, and a sense of foreboding settles over him, though he already knows what the outcome of this little altercation will be. This is the point where some will leave the academy, and those that remain will find themselves shaken, but still willing to go on. This is the point where loyalties are determined, where people decide who their friends really are, and who their enemies really are.

It's just like high school in that aspect, and though he hates to think of the academy that way, he knows that it's true. There are the same sorts of cliques that he always hated through those awkward years, the ones he never _felt_ as if he were a part of, but somehow always found himself in one or the other. And now he finds himself looking at his past, stuck in the middle, just like he always was during those academy days, trying to keep the peace between everyone. It was an impossible task then, just like it is now, but it was worth it.

The scene changes one last time, and he finds himself standing with the others, being told which beat they're going to be serving, in uniforms with silver shields, the lot of 'em, and though all of them are glad it's over, they won't show it, because they're cops now, and that's not the sort of thing cops do. But when they walk out of the academy for the last time, they know that they won't be looking back. This is the path they have taken, the lives that they have chosen to lead. They've made it through, the lot of them, together, whether they want to think of it that way or not. They were all still kids in many ways when they walked in, but now they have found themselves, and their meanings.

The flashback breaks, then, with the sound of someone running down the stairs. He turns away from the window, just in time to see his eldest child walking into the kitchen in search of something to eat. A look at the clock tells him that it's now exactly six-thirty. The mug of coffee that was close to burning him earlier on has gone cold in his hands, but he doesn't mind. He's not even thinking about it, really. And even though he's no longer staring out the window, he's still thinking about the past…about those academy days that made him who he is right now…those days that make him wonder what will become of him in the near future.


End file.
